According to TechSpot, Google’s Chrome division is testing an experimental browser called Disco, which was born from a hackathon project. The browser uses a feature called GenTabs, powered by the Gemini 3 AI model, to turn user prompts into personalized, interactive mini-apps. In a demo, a request to plan a trip to Japan generated a workspace with a map, itinerary builder, and links to sources. The project is led by Parisa Tabriz and demonstrated by Manini Roy, who emphasize it’s not a Chrome replacement but a Google Labs experiment exploring task-driven browsing. The team is still deciding if these GenTabs should be permanent web apps or temporary tools.
Disco Isn’t a Browser, It’s a Workspace Builder
Here’s the thing: Disco feels less like a new browser and more like Google‘s attempt to answer a big question. What if your browser wasn’t just a window to the web, but a tool that built you a custom dashboard for every single task? That’s the core idea. You don’t just get links about moving cross-country; Gemini builds you a little app with a packing list, a cost calculator, and a comparison table. It’s browsing as a creative, generative act.
And that’s a fascinating shift. For decades, the browser’s job was to fetch and display. Now, Google’s playing with one whose job is to assemble and integrate. The most telling detail from the demo is that users apparently spent more time on actual websites, not less. That’s huge. It suggests the AI is acting more like a super-powered research assistant than a walled-garden chatbot that just summarizes links. It’s guiding you to the source material and then helping you make sense of it all in one place.
The Real Competition Isn’t Other Browsers
So who should be worried? Honestly, not Firefox or Safari. Parisa Tabriz is clear this isn’t a Chrome competitor. The real tension is with other AI interfaces, like ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Copilot. Those platforms want you to stay inside their chat window. Disco’s entire premise is to use AI to get you out of a single interface and actively engaged with the open web, even as it builds a custom layer on top.
But it also creates a weird tension for Google itself. The company’s main product is a search engine that sends you away to other sites. Disco, in a way, wants to keep you in a Google-built workspace, even if that workspace is populated with outside links. Can they balance being the gateway and the destination? That’s the billion-dollar puzzle. If this tech ever trickled into Chrome proper, it could fundamentally change the economics of web traffic.
The Big Questions Are All Unanswered
Now, let’s be skeptical. This is a Google Labs experiment, which is basically where cool ideas go to… often disappear. The team doesn’t even know if these GenTabs should be permanent, shareable web apps or just ephemeral scratchpads. That’s a fundamental product decision they haven’t made! Users are already asking to export data to Google Docs or Sheets, which makes perfect sense. But will that integration be seamless, or will it feel clunky?
And what about the web ecosystem? If Gemini is building these little apps on the fly, pulling in data from various sites, where does attribution and revenue go? It’s one thing to link to a travel blog; it’s another to ingest its recommendations into a custom itinerary builder. These are the messy, hard problems that go way beyond a slick demo. Disco proves the concept is possible. Turning it into something sustainable and fair is a whole other challenge.
A Glimpse of a More Active Web
Basically, Disco is a prototype for a world where the line between searching, browsing, and creating is totally blurred. It’s not about consuming static pages anymore. It’s about telling your browser what you want to do and having it build you the tool to do it. That’s a powerful vision.
Will we ever see Disco as a standalone product? Probably not. But pieces of it—especially the GenTabs concept—feel destined to surface in Chrome or other Google services. The experiment shows Google is thinking hard about making the browser an AI co-pilot for tasks, not just a viewer for documents. After years of the web feeling kinda static, that’s at least an exciting thought. The future might not be asking an AI for an answer, but asking it to build you a workspace where you can find your own.
